Customer Reviews

The Man in the Queue

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The "Man in the Queue", by Josephine Tey, commences on London's West Side, where "Didn't You Know?", the hit musical, is in the last week of its run. Its newly famous star, Ray Marcable, who is London's darling, is leaving for America to seek even greater fame and fortune there. The show has been sold out for weeks, but there is a huge line (the queue of the title) outside, waiting for a chance to get same day only seats for the show. The people in line have been waiting several hours, on the whole good-naturedly, but there is considerable pushing and shoving and re-aligning as the line finally begins to move forward. When a middle-aged woman reaches the ticket booth, she indignantly turns to say something to the man who is pushing hard against her back and is horrified when he falls to the ground dead with a silver dagger sticking out of his back. No one can say when the dead man was stabbed, for the crush of the crowd has supported and carried him forward for some time

When his body is examined by the police, the young man is revealed to be carrying no identification, and has no tags or marks in his clothes. The only item of interest is a service revolver in his pocket, with fingerprints on it that prove not to be the victim's. Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard is assigned the case and the remainder of the book is an absorbing police procedural documenting the painstaking process of his quest to discover first the victim's identity and then his murderer. The search truly does become a quest for Grant, who is moved by something in the face of the victim and angered by the anonymity and callousness of his end.

Although The Man in the Queue was written almost 70 years ago, in 1929, it has aged amazingly well and will not be read as a quaint period piece, even though the war that many of the male characters fought in and the female ones nursed in is The Great War, WWI. One reason for the lack of datedness in the book is the fact that although Tey was writing in the Golden Age of British mysteries, her novels are driven more by the personalities and motivations of her characters than by the tricky kind of puzzles that depend on timetables and exotic poisons. What causes people to commit evil acts is more interesting to her than merely naming a villain. In fact, the subtext of The Man in the Queue is the question of whether there is a villain in the story at all.

Reading this book in context is the key. It's a first book and it was written in 1929 (before the crash). Yes, the language is of a different place and time. Some of it is awkward for a modern ear (the "foreigner" phrase in particular). Still, I enjoy being transported to a different world once in awhile and reading writing from that time is different than when a modern writer writes of history.

The plotting on this is pretty simple - finite number of suspects and such. The ending came a little bit too much from left field for my taste.

Bottom line - an adequate first effort. Don't judge Tey on the basis of this book -- later books are much better.

I read, this my first Tey mystery, because all mystery afficiondos should at least sample her writing. She is famous in the mystery world, and you need to read her in order to determine how we got to where we did with mystery writing. I enjoyed the story. She certainly puts enough twists and turns in her plots. The book is somewhat dated (it was written in 1929) after all, but she has a lot of talent. I liked Inspector Grant even though he really didn't solve this puzzler, but it was fun following him around in his quest for the killer. This is a rather unique format for a "locked room" mystery since the victim was stabbed outside in a theatre queue, but it appeared that no one had the opportunity to do the deed. I want to continue to read the rest of her books. She writes fairly complex stories.

I had mixed feeling about Josephine Tey. I thought "Daughter of Time" was overrated, but I really enjoyed "The Franchise Affair" and "Miss Pym Disposes". So when I came across of copy of "The Man in the Queue" at a bazaar sale, I invested $.50 and gave it a read.

The story starts out with a clever murder. Inspector Grant faced with an unidentified victim and unknown motive begins bit by bit to glean pieces of information. This process is by far the best part of the book. Eventually, he identitifies and tracks down the prime suspect. Despite all the evidence, Grant remains unconvinced of the suspect's guilt and continues his investigations. Then "Deus Ex Machina" (translation: out of left field) comes the solution -- definitely not in the "fair play" category and very disappointing.

Historians and critics of the mystery/detective genre may like "The Man in the Queue". Ordinary readers like me should skip it.

Josephine Tey is often touted as a Thinking Man's Mystery Writer, a more literary version of such contemporaries as Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. This is the first of her books that I've read, and she was indeed a splendid writer. But the mark of any good mystery author (as far as I'm concerned) is the ability to dazzle the audience with the denouement, usually at the hands of the brilliant amateur or professional sleuth who's trying to solve the case. Tey's Detective Grant seems remarkably able at the start of the book to pull together loose strands of information and reach those impressive conclusions that readers expect from fictional detectives. But the actual solution of the whodunit is literally handed to him (by a minor character who simply confesses out of the blue) and is due neither to his brains nor his instincts. It comes, in fact, at a time in the story when Grant is absolutely stuck and has no idea what to do next. By this time he's made as many mistakes and ignored as many important clues as he's followed. Perhaps this was Tey's way of showing us the fallibility and humaness of the police, but is that what we want in our fictional sleuths? Give me someone omniscient like Poirot or Peter Wimsey any day.

There seem to be various complaints about this one but I have nothing but good things to say about it! I'll confess to being a HUGE Tey fan but there's not a thing wrong in that.

This is a British cosy murder with a great plot and plenty of atmosphere. A man is standing in a theater Queue when he is stabbed in the back by an unknown assailant. This seems very odd to Scotland Yard Inspector Grant since the crime scene was such a public place... but little by little, clues and witnesses begin to emerge.

Before it's all over, Grant has to consider multiple suspects and ends up in a manhunt that takes him to the wilds of an obscure Scottish hamlet -- and he's STILL not done!

For any fan of the genre, this is just a super mystery and a fluid read. Great stuff for rainy Saturday mornings.

I read all of Josephine Tey's books about 40 years ago. I loved her then and I love her more now. The Man in the Queue gives more of an insight into how a crime is/isn't solved than all of the police shows currently on TV (much as I enjoy Law & Order and others.) One reviewer complained that he didn't "see" the solution and felt that Tey had pulled a kind of "deus ex machina" at the end of the book, introducing something that hadn't been there before. I disagree. The clue is there at the start of the book but, Tey leads us through the solution along WITH Inspector Grant. We miss the clue because he did and the fact that he missed it is quite believable. Although this book was written so very long ago and contains references (Levantine, hirsute jehu) that are puzzling to the modern reader, it is still a very "modern" novel as it charts the difficulties in solving murders.

As noted by other reviewers, Tey doesn't necessarily present the reader with all the clues needed for the reader to solve the mystery. Still, the reader can enjoy a bit of a brain teaser as Tey brings all her characters to life.

I'm a big Tey fan and anglophile and I simply enjoy reading her works. This book is no exception.

Foul Language - None.

Sex - None.

Violence - The murder in the queue - not graphic.

Over the years I've read at least two other books by Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time, a reference to which I came across in another book and with which I was very much taken, and Miss Pym Disposes which had been recommended by a friend and which I also enjoyed. I hadn't thought much about her until I again came across another reference to her in a more recent murder mystery, one of the Agatha Raisin mysteries, The Quiche of Death (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, No. 1), and decided to check her out again. In doing so I found this mystery, apparently her first.

When I first started the book I wasn't sure I was going to like it. The prose was somewhat old fashion in its cadence, which took me a while to get into, and then the character of the detective took a while to develop in my mind. He seemed lacking in personality. I can only attribute this to my recent saturation in modern mysteries which stress the outrageous and devote all creativity to dialogue.

After getting into the plot I found it marvelously rich in moods, character studies and diversions. It's mode of creating expectations in the reader reminds me much of Collin Dexter's Inspector Morse series The Way Through the Woods (Inspector Morse). Here too, the author skillfully creates a completely acceptable solution only to reinterpret the clues at the last moment and point to a completely different suspect. In fact, I didn't get it right until the very end.

I was sorry that the 1920's ambiance did not come through quite as clearly as one might hope. Except to the reference to hanging up the ear piece of a telephone on its rack, as one would with a candlestick phone of that period, there is very little by way of cultural clues that make this book any different from one written in the `50s or later. I doubt, however, that the author was thinking--or even able to think--about her time period as quaint and ephemeral and that it would be fun to preserve it for later generations of "classic" murder mysteries, so I guess one can forgive her for that. In fact, because they are aware of the differences, modern mysteries writers have been able to make an entire new genre of "historical" murder mystery, using these differences as part of the ambiance. Anne Perry,Execution Dock: A William Monk Novel, Buckingham Palace Gardens: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel, and At Some Disputed Barricade: A Novel (World War I) is renoun for this as is Rhys Bowen, A Royal Pain (A Royal Spyness Mystery).

To some extent, the reader does come away feeling just a trifle manipulated at the end, as though some of the author's slight of hands were not quite legal. It really borders on the not quite fair. That doesn't make the story uninteresting however, and I suspect that the police actually do resift and redirect their attention in trying to solve real crimes. I thoroughly enjoyed some of the travelling the central character did in his attempt to catch the suspect and to clarify his guilt or innocence.

I'll definitely read more of the author.

While there are mysteries so well written that one wonders if the author is just a great writer using the genre for fun or is developing from mystery writer to great author per se, these possibilities are frustratingly inapplicable here it seems. Tey becomes a very fine writer, but since this is her first novel, it doesn't reflect her later maturity. However, some of her "mystery" novels (I've read 4 others so far) seem more literary than mysteries. She regularly withholds information the reader would need to independently solve the mystery. She is not the only one to do this however--many modern "mystery novelists" do this as well. It's rare to be able to figure out a P.D. James novel's mystery either for example. This is one of the reasons that Agatha is so wonderful--she provides both the fine writing & a fair chance to the reader. So, to my mind, Tey is no Christie. In fact, in this novel, the reader is led down the garden path intentionally so that the author can pull something totally unpredictable out of a hat--a bit maddening to the diehard mystery lover. Also annoying to the American reader are her many (to me obscure) British colloquialisms & expressions, which are not understandable by the context, as well as her occasional use of an "I" narrator out of the blue. Also, the internal ruminations of the inspector (who is personable but a bit less able than one would hope) are sometimes trying. She's also a bit negative about foreigners--including America (p. 222) but that may just be part of the story. Her perspective may either be dated or simply dissimilar--p. 188: "It is indecent to pry too far into even a murderer's soul"--not true for the contemporary US TV show "Criminal Intent." Some reviewers take a character's perspective to be the author's perspective--this is an assumption on their part. Still, despite all, Tey has some wonderful turns of phrase--p. 63: "the waiting room was panelled in oak that extinguished the last valiant ray of light as it fought its way past the old greenish glass of the window-pane. The light died on the window-sill as the last survivor of a charge dies on the enemy parapet, murdered but glorious" & p. 76: "No one wanted a plot tonight. No one had ever wanted one. Quite a large number of the most enthusiastic habitues were unaware that there was such a thing, and few, if any, would have been able to give a lucid account of it. And tonight to insist on wasting time with such irrelevance was folly." The last (to a degree) may be Tey's view of her readers. She's an aesthetic writer IMHO.